Moving forward

The months following that day were focused on putting the past few months behind me.  I spent my time trying to find my purpose, trying to find my way, still trying to find that normalcy.

During the time that I was becoming attached to this man in my life, we began to declare our love for each other.  Did I know what that meant; did I know how to love, did I know what it meant to return love? Not really, what I had learned from past relationships was distorted, what I had seen in media was of little help, and my parents relationship was not much to model after, but at this point in my life this relationship was the only semi stable thing I had. Did he know how to love, did he know how to deal with a teen searching for meaning, did he realize where this was going, was he searching too? What ever the connection between us was, it was the glue that was holding us together.

With the attraction and connection between us, the transition of me moving in had occurred. I don’t remember if he asked me to move in and it was something deliberate or if it just happened over a period of time with me staying over and me bringing more and more of my stuff over a little at a time. I really don’t remember, but by the time the holidays had come and gone, my 17^th birthday had passed and I had been living with him full time for a few months.  

I don’t really know where I spent the holiday season that year, my memory of that is completely gone. But at some point during the first few months of separation from my family things began to heal. Mom and my brother had moved out from the house across the street to a small house not far from there, and we began having visits that felt more like we were a family again. Dad and his girlfriend had moved out of the immediate area, and one day I looked out the window of our apartment to see my dad parked out front on the street.  I went out and sat in the car with him and we spent time talking, crying and restoring the relationship between us too. But there was a new dynamic, now I came in tow with a man and two children.

I had grown up close to my grandparents, weekly visits and parties, sleep overs, camping with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. But they were all left behind in Oregon a few years earlier, and they were not close to the turmoil that was happening in my family home, so restoring these relationships came with its own set of challenges. I have no idea as to how long it had been since I had seen either of my grandmothers.  As things began to heal with my parent I longed to restore my relations with my grandmothers as well.

So with my first attempt to introduce my new family to my Dad’s mom, I brought the four of us down for a weekend visit in mid February.  I assumed that we would sleep together like we did at home, but my beloved church going grandmother gave me the twin bed in the sewing room, and set up him with the kids in the other spare room. She made it very clear what she thought of our living arrangement.  During that visit she told me “if you are going to live with him, you might as well marry him”. In conversations after we returned home we began to talk about marriage and shopping for rings too. Because we didn't go about things in a traditional manor, nothing seemed to flow like it should. There was no formal courtship, there was no real dating, no formal proposal, things just kind of happened. So just a couple of weeks later we were married.